Intelligence Archives - Page 4 of 6

World News Connection disconnected

20 January 2014

The last day of 2013 marked more than the close of the year: it signalled the end of one of the most important global sources of publicly-accessible intelligence.

Through a low-key notice, the United States government announced that World News Connection (WNC) would be closed down on 31 December. WNC was the public database for transcribed and translated newspaper and electronic media materials gathered globally by the Director of National Intelligence Open Source Center (OSC) of the US Government. The OSC restricts itself to publicly-sourced materials—open-source intelligence (OSINT)—and the materials collected are distributed throughout US government agencies and to major agencies of key allies, including Australia. The OSC also produces a wide variety of analytical reports based on these materials. However, its most prominent public face was World News Connection, subscribed to by university libraries, think tanks and other institutions, and used by a multitude of analysts and scholars around the world.

Reader response: the risks of restraining big data

19 November 2013

Thanks to Ed Snowden, the whole world now knows about the NSA’s surveillance capabilities. In his thoughtful and timely piece on The Strategist, Klee Aiken asks if the mass surveillance of big data really keeps us safe.

Data mining technologies now allow our intelligence and security agencies to collect unprecedented amounts of personal information. Quoting a former US intelligence official, Klee describes the current approach as not so much looking for a needle in a haystack, rather ‘collecting the whole haystack.’

Electronic surveillance of all by all

5 November 2013

The arcane world of electronic surveillance is suddenly prominent. Based on Edward Snowden’s comments, the media holds that America dramatically expanded electronic surveillance after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to include Angela Merkel, 35 other foreign leaders and the populations of France, Brazil, Spain and many others.

So what? The supporters of such types of surveillance claim that everybody is doing it. That’s not the soundest of arguments however, and it’s worth understanding why ‘everyone’ is so enamoured with the idea.

Machiavelli advised that any action was valued that advanced the state. The national interest should drive a state’s actions but these actions should be judged against the results achieved. Actions that weaken the state, that are reckless and that are indifferent to the range of possible consequences are deemed imprudent. The results achieved justify the actions taken; this is ‘the morality of results’. So for those that are international relations realists the question of electronic surveillance shouldn’t be related to some higher moral frame—or some obsession—but in terms of advancing the national interest. Success generates its own morality.

NZ intelligence bill just makes it into law

29 August 2013

A major intelligence bill passed into law recently in New Zealand by the skin of its teeth. On the way, its path had been befuddled by domestic politics, entangled by the concerns over America’s National Security Agency’s gulping of huge amounts of personal information, and beset by enough administrative mistakes to make a passable TV series, though one closer to comedy than to ‘Homeland’.

The Government Communications Security Bureau and Related Legislation Amendment Bill, which clarifies the legal framework of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and is intended to increase oversight of New Zealand’s intelligence agencies passed by 61 votes to 59 with the National Party, United Future, and ACT New Zealand in favour of the bill, while the Labour Party, Green Party, Maori Party, Mana and NZ First opposed it. The Labour Party didn’t, in the end, give the traditional support expected from major parties on intelligence matters. Read more

A little transparency, please

7 August 2013

Amid the circus that was the final week of the 43rd Parliament, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) quietly tabled its report on the Inquiry into Potential Reforms of Australia’s National Security Legislation. This is an important report—the proposed changes include some especially topical issues such as data retention and telecommunications interceptions by intelligence agencies. As the furore in the United States over the ‘Prism’ program shows—and as discussed here (and here, here and here) on The Strategist—these are issues that go to the heart of the tension between secrecy and transparency in intelligence work.

The report is comprehensive and the PJCIS made some sound recommendations. But it could have been better if the government had provided the Committee with enough information to make informed recommendations.

Announcing the referral of the Inquiry to the PJCIS, then Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said: ‘Unlike the Howard Government, the Gillard Government wants to give the public a say in the development of any new laws’. More than a year later, when the report was tabled, the exact same words apparently came from the new Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus.

Poor copy and paste choices in those media releases aside, it’s not clear how serious the government was about public consultation. When the referral was announced on 4 May 2012, the government said that it would ask the Committee to report back by 31 July 2012. It was a tall order for the PJCIS to conduct a truly consultative public Inquiry on 18 specific reform proposals containing 44 separate items across three different reform areas in fewer than 12 weeks. Read more

Even more reflections on intelligence

3 July 2013

I’ve had a number of conversations (both real and virtual) about intelligence oversight since I first wrote about it here a couple of weeks ago. In particular, Andrew Zammit’s response was a thoughtful piece on the difference between oversight and transparency and Nic Stuart said what everyone else was thinking—the background fear is a ‘1984’ like level of government intrusion.

I think it’s worth exploring these ideas a bit further. My confidence in our oversight mechanisms is based on direct personal experience. I was working in intelligence when the Intelligence Services Act was passed into law and saw the care with which the government agencies which came under its remit took to implement it. I’ve also seen the Inspector General of Intelligence and Security at work—with the powers of a standing Royal Commission, this is a body that demands and receives respect.

I also teach a course at ANU on intelligence and security, and a fair amount of our time each year is spent talking about oversight and the balance between civil liberties and the need for secrecy. Judging from their end of term essays, most of the students end up agreeing that our oversight mechanisms serve us well. Read more

Looking through the Prism

17 June 2013

Coming at a time when the US has been increasingly turning the screw on China about its persistent hacking of US computer networks, the revelation that the US government itself has been gathering metadata on large swathes of its own population through a programme codenamed ‘Prism’ could have scarcely been more embarrassing. Having just finished his first round of Presidential talks with Xi Jinping where cyber intrusions were high on the agenda, Obama found himself having to defend one of the largest data collection programs ever established.

What is ‘Prism’, and what does it do that’s created such a heated reaction from the press and the public? According to the self-confessed whistle-blower, Ed Snowden, the National Security Agency has large-scale access to individual chat logs, stored data, voice traffic, file transfers and social networking data of individuals. Following the leaking of this information, the US government confirmed it had requested millions of phone records from Verizon, which had included call duration, location and the phone numbers of both parties on individual calls. Additionally Prism had allegedly enabled access to the servers of nine major technology companies, including Google, Microsoft, AOL, Apple, YouTube, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk and Skype. Read more

The General, the writer and the Bureau

14 November 2012

One of General Petraeus’ trademarks, both as a military leader and during his relatively brief tenure as Director of the CIA, was his openness and accessibility for the press. As long as the boundaries of the email conversation were clearly defined in advance, he was known to spend many hours in email correspondence with members of the press. Once confirmed in the job of CIA Director, he was the first in that role to install an open internet connection in his office. This skill to communicate with those outside the military ‘bubble’ assisted his successful shaping of his positive public persona, and to a degree—either deliberately or otherwise—promote an image of a potential future President of the United States. So it’s ironic that a man so aware of the positive uses of the cyber domain appears to have been brought down in flames by that very medium.

As the drama of the Petraeus affair unfolds hour by hour, captivating political observers, some might not have noticed Google’s recent transparency report. Released this week, it displays an increasing number of government requests for the removal of online content and access to user details. The latest report demonstrates that up to the end of the first half of 2012 there were 20,938 inquiries from governments around the world. Those requests were for information about 34,614 user accounts.

These two stories are important and linked because they highlight the surveillance powers that governments now have at their disposal, and provide a lesson on how we should all be aware of our online activity. If a CIA Director can be caught out, what hope do the rest of us have? Read more

ASPI recommends: Psychology of Intelligence Analysis

22 October 2012

For your (virtual) bookshelf: Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, Richards J. Heuer, Centre for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1999.

In the 1990s, the CIA commissioned a study on the nature of intelligence analysis to try to understand why they had an unenviable track record of missing (more accurately, underestimating) some major developments in areas they had been watching closely, such as the decline of the Soviet Union. Or, as Jack Davis, himself a former CIA analyst memorably put it, the CIA analysts had mind sets that helped ‘get the production out on time and keep things going effectively between those watershed events that become chapter headings in the history books’.

Heuer’s monograph, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, is something of a classic in the field, and it sheds much light on the frailties of the human mind regarding the difficulties of making objective assessments of complex situations when only incomplete information is available. This is a very readable book in that it is not a theory-based approach, and it is full of examples of how we can fool ourselves into being surer than we have any right to be. Read more

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